ExxonMobil Mails Customer 2,000 Credit Cards

By consumeristcareyJuly 26, 2007

ExxonMobil sent a box containing 1,000 credit cards to Frank Van Buren, who had requested two (2) new cards to replace one that was about to expire. The cards contained Frank’s name and account number, and would have worked right out of the box since ExxonMobil saw activation stickers as an unnecessary extravagance. Frank saved the two cards he had requested, and spent three hours shredding the remaining 1,000.

He thought that was that. Until another box arrived this week.

“How could you send me 2,000 cards by mistake?” Van Buren said he asked customer service after the second plastic payload arrived.

When he was again told that it was a mistake and that he should destroy these, too, he balked and said he’d rather return them.

“They refused to take them back,” he said.

Citibank, which issued the credit cards, apologized to Frank, and is investigating the incident with ExxonMobil.

“One of the main ways identity thieves work is by stealing credit cards right out of your mailbox,” added Zulfikar Ramzan, a security expert at software giant Symantec. “For all you know, there could be a third box that he didn’t get.”

Honestly, this is deeply puzzling. How on Earth could this happen? Someone had to box up the 1,000 credit cards. Twice. Didn’t it occur to someone that sending 1,000 credit cards to someone doesn’t make sense? I get that an automation mistake could have started this, but isn’t there any step in the process where a human being would have responded with the warranted incredulity to sending a customer 1,000 credit cards? Twice?

The funniest part is on the box itself – Exxon-Mobil purchased both USPS Delivery Confirmation and Insurance for the package! So if someone “lost” the package of already active cards at least EM would get their money back!

I was billed every month for a year, by T-Mobile, for $0.00. Calling them didn’t resolve it. In a fit of boredom once I sent them a check for that amount…wonder if they cashed it?

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I was billed $1.07 by Mobil after closing my business account with them. They said I owed and if I didn’t pay, there will be a late charge.

I just got 2000 computer still checks from my bank as part of business checking deal and knew they would last a very long time, so I sent 107 checks to “The Cheap Bastards at Mobil” and they cashed everyone of them!

I still had like 1700 checks when I closed out that bank account years later!

Look on the bright side. I originally thought they did this because their computer overwrote two thousand other orders for cards. Imagine if two thousand cards with his name on it went out, but were mailed to a thousand or so different people.

Getting a credit card and buying an HDTV: $1000
Getting 2 credit cards and letting the wife use the other: $5000
Getting 2000 credit cards and snapping a picture of the expression on your face: PRICELESS!

When I get a new card, they send it in an envelope. How could they not notice they were putting 1000 cards in a box? Do they HAVE an automated process for that? How many people regularly have 1000 cards shipped to them?

The $0.00 bill generaly comes from an accounting error, where taxes are not rounded up to the nearest penny. If the tax on service is, for example, 43.3 cents, but is not rounded up to 43 cents, then you get the bill for 43 cents and have a .3 cent A/R. which shows up on your next statement as $0.00 because it’s less than .5 cents.

Wasn’t there a story about Exxon limiting the amount you could charge at once on gas? If so, maybe this is their answer to rising gas prices. It’s just not too reassuring when they feel you need 2000 cards to pay for 1 tank fill.

No, billing continued for 2 more months. It went exactly one full year. This is for a service I cancelled before activating it or paying anything. If they wanted to waste paper and postage that’s thier call.